Artists

Composer and guitarist William Kentner Anderson began playing chamber music at the Tanglewood Festival at age 19. He later performed with the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Players, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, NY Philharmonic, and many other NYC-based ensembles and organizations. Anderson was recently featured at the Festival Internacional Camarata 21 in Xalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico, Ebb & Flow Arts in Maui, and Moderne Mandag in Copenhagen and was a member of the Theater Chamber Players, the resident ensemble at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

Born in Trondheim 1952. The Music Conservatory of Bergen (now The Grieg Academy) 1969-1971 (Church musician, composition studies with Ketil Hvoslef). Royal College of Music in Stockholm 1971-1972 (composition studies with Ingvar Lidholm). Full time composer since 1974. Has written commissioned works for the large orchestras of the country, for choirs like Bergen Cathedral Choir and The Norwegian Soloists Choir, for chamber ensembles like the Oslo String Quartet and Grieg Trio, and for soloists like Geir Inge Lotsberg (violin), Arvid Engegård (Hardanger fiddle), Njål Vindenes (guitar), Jan Hovden (piano), Geir Draugsvoll (accordeon), Bjørn Ianke (double bass), Eirik Birkeland (bassoon), Øyvind Bjorå (violin), Willy Postma (harp), Jun Zhi Cui (Chinese harp), Nils Økland (Hardanger fiddle), Ellen Sejersted Bødtker (harps), Kåre Nordstoga (organ) and many others.

To listen to Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi’s music is to become open to the possibility of hearing surprising things: in her work, and through her compositional methods, the familiar is made strange and the unfamiliar finds space to sound. One encounters quotations from music history (or are they imagined quotations?), as well as fragmented and invented languages. The listener is invited to explore the intimate and hidden, gestural and timbral qualities of sound. Working with scores, electronics, voices, and instruments, Ahvenniemi creates works that range from operatic and theatrical scenes to solo compositions.

A pianist who “can create whatever type of music he wants at the keyboard” (Chicago Sun-Times) and a composer who writes “with uncommon imagination” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), James Adler’s extensive list of compositions is headed by Memento mori: An AIDS Requiem. A 75-minute for work for chorus, soloists, and orchestra, Memento mori has been performed worldwide since its 1996 premiere, and recorded by AmorArtis Chorale and Orchestra under the direction of Johannes Somary on Albany Records. Other works by Adler include the often-performed Carols of Splendour, which premiered at Carnegie Hall; It’s Gotta Be America, commissioned for the Centennial Celebration of the Statue of Liberty; and Canticle For Peace, written for the opening of the 43rd session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Daniel Adams (b. 1956, Miami FL) is a Professor of Music at Texas Southern University in Houston.  Adams holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (1985) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Music from the University of Miami (1981) and a Bachelor of Music from Louisiana State University (1978). He served as the College Music Society Board Member for Composition from 2015 through 2017. Adams is the composer of numerous published musical compositions and the author of many articles and reviews on topics related to 20th-century percussion music, music pedagogy, and the music of Texas.  His book entitled “The Solo Snare Drum” was published in 2000. He also contributed two entries published in 2009 in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History: 1896 to the Present and has authored a revision of the Miami FL entry for the Grove Dictionary of American Music.